Women accuse Lyft of failing to protect them from ‘sexual predators’

A new lawsuit raises questions about Lyft’s handling of sexual assaults.

Photo: Gabrielle Lurie / The Chronicle

A Los Angeles woman says she was riding home from a Halloween party in a Lyft car last year when the driver told her he loved her, took her phone away, smoked drugs, drove her to a beach and raped her.

A blind woman says a Lyft driver took her to a grocery store near her home in Alabama in January 2018, then drove her home, forced his way into the residence and raped her. A North Carolina woman says her Lyft driver followed her into a North Carolina hotel room in May, raped her, stole her belongings and tipped himself $25 from her credit card. A Palo Alto woman says she fell asleep in the back seat of a Lyft vehicle last November when she awoke to find the driver, while driving on U.S. 101 at 70 miles an hour, reaching into the back seat to touch her genitals.

“Since 2015, sexual predators driving for Lyft have continued to assault and rape Lyft’s female passengers,” lawyers for 14 women said Tuesday in a lawsuit filed against the ride-hailing company in San Francisco Superior Court.

The suit said the company has done virtually nothing to protect the women — hiring drivers “without any real screening” or criminal background checks, failing to monitor its rides, and allowing drivers to stay on the job even after complaints of sexual assault.

Lyft, based in San Francisco, responded Wednesday with a statement from a company executive, Mary Winfield, who is also a board member of the independent National Domestic Violence Hotline.

“What the victims describe is terrifying and has no place in the Lyft community,” she said. “As a (service) committed to providing safe transportation, we hold ourselves to a higher standard by designing products and policies to keep out bad actors, make riders and drivers feel safe, and react quickly if and when an incident does occur.”

Lyft said in a separate statement that it screens prospective drivers carefully and conducts annual criminal background checks and “continuous criminal monitoring,” contrary to the accusation in the lawsuit. The company also said it plans to make “sexual harassment prevention training available to riders and drivers.”

Among the 13 drivers mentioned by their first or full names in the suit, one of whom allegedly attacked two women, Lyft said it has deactivated each one it was able to identify.

But the suit said that virtually all the sexual assault victims were unable to find out from Lyft whether their assailants were still employed.

After a driver in Salt Lake City was criminally charged with battery for a sexual assault in his car last December, the suit said, a police detective told the woman that the man was still working for Lyft, where “they keep driving until they are convicted.” The driver later pleaded guilty to battery, the suit said, and when the woman emailed Lyft five months later and asked if he was still driving, the company “replied that they couldn’t confirm (his) status.”

Because Lyft’s drivers are not well-paid, the suit said, the company has a high turnover rate, and maintains a policy “designed to accept as many new drivers as possible,” with little screening or discipline.

“Shockingly,” the suit said, “a chatroom of (ride-hail) drivers exists where they openly discuss and brag about the access that they have to women passengers.”

In addition to concealing their drivers’ records from passengers, the suit said, “Lyft has no policy to report crimes of rape and other sexual assaults to law enforcement after these crimes are reported to them.” In addition, the lawyers said, the company has failed to provide police with “records and documentation regarding sexual predators that have committed multiple assaults.”

In the case of the Los Angeles woman attacked after a Halloween party, the suit said she reported the assault to police the next day. Officers notified Lyft, which allowed the man she accused to keep driving, the suit said. Later, police told her “it was her word against the driver,” a situation that would not have arisen if Lyft used surveillance cameras or other devices to monitor its rides, the suit said. It said the woman has attempted suicide twice since the assault.

The blind woman raped in Alabama reported the attack to Lyft electronically and by phone, the suit said. A week later, the company sent her an email saying it had “followed up with this driver to take the appropriate and necessary actions.”

Police later told the woman that they had closed their criminal investigation of the driver “because they had no evidence that the incident was not consensual,” the suit said. It said Lyft never informed the woman whether it still employed the driver.

Bob Egelko has been a reporter since June 1970. He spent 30 years with the Associated Press, covering news, politics and occasionally sports in Los Angeles, San Diego and Sacramento, and legal affairs in San Francisco from 1984 onward. He worked for the San Francisco Examiner for five months in 2000, then joined The Chronicle in November 2000.

His beat includes state and federal courts in California, the Supreme Court and the State Bar. He has a law degree from McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento and is a member of the bar. Coverage has included the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978, the appointment of Rose Bird to the state Supreme Court and her removal by the voters, the death penalty in California and the battles over gay rights and same-sex marriage.